"(I also want to note that for your sake, if you cannot read/write ruby at the level of writing a cookbook than you should really question yourself as an admini

"(I also want to note that for your sake, if you cannot read/write ruby at the level of writing a cookbook than you should really question yourself as an administrator.)" Ruby is quite complex language. I would say more complex than Python and should not be considered standard. When you use Chef/Puppet it is obviously required but absolutely unnecessary when you have a different setup. Or perhaps you should not call yourself and administrator if you do not know all the traits of UNIX OS-es. CFengine "lost" the battle even when it's the fastest one with the smallest performance footprint.